benito-mussolini

Early yesterday morning, Donald Trump decided to retweet a Benito Mussolini quote originally posted by Twitter bot that Gawker had made several months ago, expressly for the purpose of goading Trump into retweeting a Benito Mussolini quote. In sending out that one little tweet, Donald Trump proved the point we had in mind when we created that bot: to show that Trump’s rhetoric is often indistinguishable from that of history’s most vainglorious and authoritarian fascist dictators—Benito Mussolini, specifically.

Is Donald Trump a fascist? Experts, historians, and pundits have debated the question for months. One thing has been certain for a while now: He tweets like one. That’s why, last year, Gawker’s Ashley Feinberg created a Twitter bot that would post quotes from the writings and speeches of the Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, but with all of them attributed to businessman and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. This morning, he retweeted that account.